Commentary: When the ‘experts’ get it wrong

When I go to a doctor, I am admitting by my actions that my problem is not one I can manage on my own and that the doctor has greater expertise is dealing with my medical problem than I have.

I go to an accountant to manage my income tax filings because the tax code is so complex. My going to an account is an acknowledgement that I can’t manage the tax filing myself, or at least it shows that I don’t want to take the enormous amount of time that managing it myself would require.

Unlike a few decades ago, when I could change the points and spark plugs of my car or dismantle and reassemble a telephone myself, many of the devices we use today cannot be properly repaired by a consumer. Just raising the hood on today’s cars has me bewildered. New models of smartphones come out with such rapidity it seems we don’t actually fix them so much as simply replace them with newer models.

We place our lives in the hands of experts all the time.

Even though I would never tell my doctors, accountants, lawyers and even auto mechanics how to do their jobs, they are just as dependent on us as we are on them. If we are unsatisfied with the services of experts in specific fields, we can choose others. Some experts are chosen for us. We have some control over some of them. Many, if not most, of the wizards of political commentary in the media have been getting it wrong for some time now and some are now admitting that their predictions this political season were disastrously wrong.

We have the power to switch from the channels that broadcast these experts or to turn off the TV altogether.

The same goes for writers, which is why I don’t puff myself up as an expert on all the things I write about. Even though the Journal-Courier chose me to write here, and cable news services choose their experts to make comments, you can still disregard them.

However, there is a group of experts chosen for you who you can’t just ignore. Their judgments are going to affect you whether you like it or not. We did not choose the financial experts at the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, the Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission; in short, the pantheon of experts who in their wisdom missed the looming financial crisis 10 years ago. In every department of government, there are unelected experts whose judgments affect us and we have little or no recourse to alter or ignore them. When they fail, they often won’t admit it, partly because they know you and I have no other place to go.

In short, they not only have the aura of expertise — whether deserved or not — they also have monopoly power.

Obamacare is now unraveling. Insurance companies are leaving the system and many of those that remain intend to raise their premiums substantially. Individuals who were expected to act against their own interests and buy insurance they didn’t need, especially the young, have failed to do so in sufficient numbers to sustain the system.

Experts warned us against this. However, they were the experts with no monopoly power.

When experts we control by choice get it wrong, the bad outcome is contained and although bad for some, it is more manageable.

However, when those with monopoly power get it wrong, the outcome can often be calamitous for everyone.